Category : EDU Guest Post

Thinglink Interactive Learning Menus

Are you looking for more engaging ways to provide your students with choice-based assignments and activities? One way to provide students with more meaningful, self-directed learning opportunities is to create an Interactive Learning Menu in Thinglink. Interactive Learning Menus, also known as Choice Boards, provide students with a variety of options to choose from based on their individual interests.

Wow! What a semester! At Florida A&M University, it’s been all about change and seeing things from a whole new perspective. For starters, we have a new president, this semester Dr. Larry Robinson became the 12th president of the University. Go Rattlers! We also have a new Head Football Coach, Willie Simmons, who had been away from the city for about 20-years, and has happily returned to make an impact on a field he calls “home.” Change and new perspectives has also made a difference in how we view things at FAMU, especially when it comes to using Virtual Reality/360 technology. This semester, we established a dedicated lab inside the FAMU School of Business & Industry for producing Virtual Reality Content using Thinglink 360/VR.

This week’s ThingLink Certified Educator Guest Post takes a bit of a different twist as week take a look at using ThingLink as a tool to create interactive 360 Virtual Field trips. We are excited to extend an invitation to teachers and their students to join us in DPTV’s Digital Adventure, featuring ThingLink 360/VR. on December 13th, 14th and 15th.

Who says reviewing has to be drudgery? I’ve always dreaded reviewing for tests because it was hard to keep my students engaged. Not anymore!

Now, I look forward to reviewing using the digital breakouts on ThingLink. Breakout EDU and ThingLink cover the four C’s; collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication. ThingLink bumps it up a notch by adding stunning visuals, and music to make each activity incredibly engaging. The program is so versatile; you can embed just about anything in a ThingLink, including Google Apps, Jigsaw planet and more!

The following is a post written by Laura Moore and published on the Sutori Blog on November 14, 2017. Laura is a K-12 Technology Integrator for North East Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas. Laura is a longtime ThingLink Certified Educator who continues to amaze us with her talents and innovative ideas for embracing technology for learning. Explore Laura's work on ThingLink and Sutori. Connect with her on Twitter at @LearnMooreStuff and follow her amazing blog, Learn Moore Stuff.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could design a lesson any way you wanted without platform limitations?

The term App Smash was coined by Greg Kulowiec (@gregkulowiec), who shares much of his work and thinking on his website, The History 2.0 Classroom. After working with iPads for some time, he quickly realized the following,

“Most processes couldn’t be completed with just one app. While many apps slightly overlap in terms of functionality, there tends to be a few black holes in each app that require the use of another app to complete the process.”

The same can be said for web-based tools such as G Suite. In a perfect world, I would have the ability to embed content within a Google Doc. There are a few hacks you can use to embed a YouTube video, but it’s really not the same. When platforms allow you to work in conjunction with other platforms, then your “what if?” can become a reality.

My interest in ThingLink began when I saw an advertisement about becoming a ThingLink Certified Educator. As an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher (ITRT) for Richmond City Public Schools in Virginia, it is always important to me to find exciting and innovative tools to help teachers engage students with various content. After exploring the program, it was clear that ThingLink is an amazing fit for an endless array of learning opportunities. Indeed, I am so excited to become more familiar with the tool and to be able to share it with the educators I work with.

We were so excited to have an opportunity to share our ThingLink journey with the attendees of the 24th Annual HBCU Faculty Development Network Conference, in Washington, DC. Our workshop was titled “Case Study: Experience the Implementation of Virtual Reality at an HBCU”. The workshop participants expressed various levels of familiarity with virtual reality as a tool however very few had explored how it could be used in instruction. This “open mindset” provided a great opportunity to share ideas of how ThingLink can be used to immerse students in several educational disciplines.

We invite you to enjoy this guest post by Jeff Snyder-Reinke, and explore the virtual tour of Zhaojue Monastery in Chengdu created by his students as a final project at College of Idaho. Please note: The front page of this project includes a description of the project and an explanation of how to navigate the tour. Please click the enter button to enter and explore the site

We are pleased to feature a Friday guest post by Gregory Allar, a talented ThingLink Certified Educator who is a Special Lecturer for the International Studies Program at Oakland University in Rochester Michigan. We hope you are inspired by Gergory’s post.

We are pleased to feature a Friday guest post by Andrew Fehnel, a Social Studies Teacher and Technology Coach in Whitehall, Pennsylvania. In addition to being a Thinglink Certified Educator, Andrew is also a Keystone Technology Innovator. We hope you enjoy learning about using Interactive Field Trips with Andrew.

“Thinglink is my go to instructional tool. It allows me to be creative and engaging in my lesson plans and provides my students with multiple ways to engage with content.”